Who Are You Dressing To Impress? | Decoding the Torah Season 3

The way we dress may reveal more about ourselves than we realize, particularly as it relates to how we're walking with God and the consciousness that we have in Him of the role that we're playing on the earth as His priest. As we continue to delve into the laws of the Torah to gain application for our lives today as followers of Jesus, I want to draw our attention to the book of Exodus, chapter 20, verse 26. We come to a law that pertains to how the priest should dress as they were ministering in the tabernacle and then later the temple. So here are the word of God. This is where the law comes from, Exodus 20, verse 26. And you shall not go up by steps to my altar. The Lord is speaking here, of course, to the priest. And you shall not go up by steps to my altar, so that your nakedness will not be exposed on it. The priest had to ascend into the place where they ministered, into the place where they offered sacrifices, into the place where they stood before the people as priests on God's behalf. And if they would have ascended to that place by steps, then the people that were standing beneath the steps could have looked under the priest robe and their flesh, their nakedness, would have been exposed. So what was commanded instead was that a ramp was built. So when the priest went up by the ramp, there was no way that people from underneath the ramp could look up and have the priest's nakedness be exposed. This tells us a lot, beloved friends, about how we as the Lord's sons and daughters in the earth ought to dress. Notice that the Lord was very particular about not letting the flesh of the priest get in the way of a sanctified, holy environment from which the priest presided and from which the people stood around or were gathered and worshiped. The tabernacle, as many of you know, eventually became the permanent structure of the temple. The tabernacle was the portable house of worship that was carried through the wilderness as

the children of Israel were on the way to the promised land. And every part of the tabernacle was given by the Lord himself. The Lord told Moses exactly how the tabernacle should be built, what it should be built out of, what the measurement should be, each particular piece of furniture that was to go in the tabernacle that we call in Hebrew the Mishkan. Mishkan is the Hebrew name for tabernacle. And it was a divine blueprint. It wasn't a matter of the priests getting together and trying to design it themselves, trying to create something that they thought would serve their purposes. God literally gave them the blueprint. And not only did he give them the blueprint for the tabernacle, but he gave the blueprint to the priest how to dress, what sacrifice should be offered, all the instructions that pertain to the tabernacle worship. Again, the tabernacle was the portable house of worship that the Israelites carried through the wilderness on the way to the promised land. And then once they entered the promised land, the land of Israel, Eretz Yisrael, once they got to Israel, eventually a permanent house of worship was built that we call the temple. As many of you know, the first and second temple were destroyed. And now all that's left in Jerusalem is the retaining wall that held up the second temple. But the temple was one of the great wonders of the world that was the wonder of the world. It's no longer standing, of course. And interestingly, Yeshua predicted it would be destroyed. He said to Israel that because they did not recognize the time of their visitation, the temple would be destroyed and the people of Jerusalem would be scattered. So there's no longer a temple, but these instructions that were given to the priests about how to dress pertain not only to how they worshiped and dressed when they ministered in the tabernacle, but then later in the temple itself. Now the reason the Lord commanded the construction of the tabernacle is that he could meet with Israel there. He said to Israel through Moses, build me a tabernacle that I might meet with my people

there. So it was the place of meeting between God and his people. And God, once again, had very specific instructions about. the type of dress the priest should have when they're leading in worship. They had a dress in a way that their nakedness couldn't be exposed, that their flesh couldn't be exposed. They even wore undergarments under their robe. They looked like long underwear. So it was very important to the Lord that the flesh of mankind did not distract people from His holiness and His glory. In fact, I'm going to cover this in another law, but an additional law was that the Lord told the priest that they were to dress in garments of glory and beauty. So we've got two things going on. Number one, that the priest could not dress in a way or ascend to the tabernacle or temple in a way so that their flesh would be seen. So we have this principle of modesty involved, this principle of not drawing people to the attention of our flesh, and then also we have the principle that the priest were to dress in garments of glory and of beauty. So let's take this mitzvah, this law, this precept, and identify what elements conceptually and spiritually are relevant for our lives today as those that are now a royal priesthood, because all of us now are called a royal priesthood, and particularly I want to speak to those that lead worship in congregations. I remember some time back I went to a worship service with my worship leader at the time, and the worship team sounded great, and there was a woman up on stage that was leading the worship team, and her clothes were so tight that there was nothing left to the imagination. And I was kind of shocked by it, because I had my own congregation at the time, so I really wasn't visiting under other congregations. So I know in my congregation that I led, we didn't have women dressing like that. So I said to my worship leader next to me, I said, why is she dressed that way? I mean, again, her pants were so tight, you saw all that you could see, everything.

And he just said to me, oh, you know, that's the way people dress today. Like, he just kind of shrugged it off, like, oh, that's just the way people dress. I was like floored, I was flabbergasted, I was appalled. It's like a lack of spiritual sensitivity, a lack of Holy Spirit common sense. When we are leading worship and when we are representing the Lord to the world, God doesn't want us attracting people to our flesh. When we're representing the Lord to others, He doesn't want our flesh to be distracting. He wants people to see His glory and His beauty. But let me ask you a question. Do you dress the way you do, even though you've maybe never admitted this to yourself before? But I'm asking you now in the presence of the Lord together, are you dressing in such a way that you purposely and intentionally, without even realizing it, have dressed the way you've been dressing to draw people to your flesh? If you're a woman in tight clothes and tight jeans, isn't that to attract people to your own physical form, showing cleavage? Isn't it really to dress sensuously, to draw people to yourself, to be attracted, to be attractive to others by drawing people to your flesh? Hear me when I say to you, beloved lady of God, woman of God, you don't have to dress sensually to be attractive. It's beneath your dignity. Orthodox Jewish women wear skirts below their knees, and they're no less attractive than women that are wearing short skirts or jeans that cleave to their skin. In fact, in countries where nudity is practiced or just accepted, you go to a nude beach at some places in the world, what you find is eventually nudity loses its stimuli. It no longer does what it did when it first was revealed. When someone steps out and they're nude in an environment where no one else is nude, that's going to get a reaction. But eventually, when everybody's nude after a while, it has no allure anymore. or there's nothing attractive about it anymore. There's actually something more fascinating

in human sexuality when people dress modestly. When there's something to be revealed and uncovered in the right environment of holy matrimony instead of putting everything out there in the flesh for the world to see. The scriptures are very clear that we should dress modestly. Paul speaks about women dressing modestly as is fitting for their calling. And so we learn from this commandment here for the priest not to go up to the altar by steps so that no one would be beneath the steps and see their nakedness. We learn from that as God's priesthood that we also need to be dressing attractively in garments of glory and beauty with beautiful colors and fabrics and things of that nature but not to dress sensuously. We dress in a way to magnify God's beauty not draw people to the attention of our own flesh. I remember years ago, I'd been lifting weights a lot and it was a nice spring day and I was walking down outside the Strip Center. There was a bunch of stores and I was on the sidewalk, the walkway in front of the stores and all the stores had big windows. And I was feeling really good because I'd been lifting weights, I was feeling strong and I was already probably like 45 years old. I'm 67 now, so I was probably like maybe 50 years old and I was thinking to myself, man, you look pretty good.

I looked at my muscle and I looked into the mirror, in the window, I was passing by the stores and I looked into the window of the store that I was passing by to see my reflection, to see my muscle in the window, kind of admiring my muscles. And as soon as I did that, my nose just started pouring out blood, my nose just started bleeding and I never got nosebleeds. It was like sudden, out of nowhere. And I felt the Lord was rebuking me. Don't look at yourself. Don't take pleasure in the power of your flesh. Glory in my spirit. And practically speaking, for example, when I minister now as a priest of the Lord and we're all priests of the Lord, I used to wear my, you know, would button down a button or so down here. I think it looks attractive, you know, to have it to, you know, it just looked younger. But I said to myself, I don't wanna dress that way because I don't wanna draw people to my flesh. I wanna draw people to the Holy One. So now you'll never see me ministering or if I do, I forgot to do it, but I always make a practice of, you know, having one button down, not two buttons down or three buttons down, which again,

magnifies the power of the flesh when people, when you know where your chest is out there. We don't want that. We wanna dress attractively and beautifully, beloved, in a way that draws people's attention to the Lord. So I wanna ask you now, and if you're a man, by the way, same thing. I was talking about women and tight jeans and showing cleavage. What about our men? Are you dressing to draw people to your muscles? Are you dressing in a way that reflects the dignity that God wants you to have as His servant in the earth? This might mean making decisions a different way when we're purchasing clothes, rather than just going for the latest fashion trend, dressing the way that the world is dressing. Instead, we recognize that there's a difference between darkness and light and that we have a higher calling, beloved. We're called to a higher standard. So I wanna encourage you. God wants to affect every area of our life, including the way we dress. We're not of the world, beloved. Let that be reflected in the clothes that we wear. In the book of Numbers chapter six, the Lord gave instructions to Moses and Aaron to speak this blessing over his people. And the Lord said,

when you speak these words over my people, I will place my name on them and bless them. Receive the impartation of the Lord's blessings. Yeh Vah Recheche Yahweh Vah Yishma Rechach Ya'er Yahweh Hanave Lechach V'chunechach Yisha Yahweh Hanave Lechach Ve'asem Shalom. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift you up by His countenance and the Lord give you, beloved one, His peace. God bless you and shalom.